Bad Luck Genie: An Urban Fantasy Folly Read online

  My mother? He’d confused me with her? The bottle popped onto my lap in a swirl of blue smoke, and I jerked back in my seat, trying my hardest not to scream. “What the fuck?”

  “This is the worst day possible. How could I have such bad luck? It’s because you made me your master, isn’t it?”

  We raced out of the parking structure, barreling through the barricade arm. It skidded over the roof.

  Malware pounded the steering wheel. “I took an oath as a lightlighter to never be a master, and now… Bad luck. The worst luck. I didn’t want this!”

  I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes. “I didn’t want to be a genie!”

  “Djinni.” Now I heard the slight D sound before the jenny. Malware’s lip curled. “Genie is a derogative term. Your outfit is disgusting, and your bottle is an insult.” He punched the roof, but kept his eyes on the road. “My poor car.”

  I’d never felt so small in my entire life. Even when my parents were gone for half the year, I still felt loved and tall. But today… I swallowed the lump building in my throat and peeked at the dashboard. “Well, at least we have a full tank of gas. There’s always a silver lining.”

  Malware snorted. “You’re not Penny Avalon. Who are you?”

  “How do you know my mother?”

  He glanced at me, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “You’re Frankie and Penny Avalon’s kid?”

  “When you say it like that, it sounds like I’m a disappointment.”

  “I’d have a harder time believing you’re their kid if the Curator hadn’t already certified you as an Avalon.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Okay, so if you didn’t know my name in the speakeasy, why did you call it when you forced me into ownership of your bottle?”

  I chucked the bottle into the backseat next to a laptop with the same glyph I’d seen on his cellphone case. Now that I saw it again, I couldn’t make out the image as well as I had in the gambling den. “I felt… compelled… to choose you when I thought I recognized the malware logo on your cellphone. It looked like a knighted penguin.”

  “Shit,” he barked. “I left my cellphone behind. I’m so screwed.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. Instead, I turned on the heat and huddled in his jacket. I was so cold.

  Tires screeched behind us. Malware checked the rearview mirror and cursed again, flooring it. “Get down!”

  Shots rang out. I did a tornado drill under the dashboard, covering the back of my neck. Metal pinging against the car made me gasp.

  “Are they shooting at us?” Adrenaline whooshed through me once more, and I could feel every second tick by.

  “Yeah. I’ll lose them. Keep your head down, Avalon.”

  The car swayed roughly back and forth as I stared at Malware from my crouched position. A muscle ticked in his clenched jaw as his eyes darted to the mirror and back. I banged against the center console as he took sharp corners and quick turns, never staying on the same street for long. I tried to watch through the window, but every time I lifted my head, he’d roar around another corner. I thanked my lucky stars I wasn’t carsick.

  The pinging stopped, and feeling that it might be safe enough to sit up, I eased back into my seat. Malware floored it on the onramp for the highway. I turned around and looked out the back window, but I didn’t see any crazy cars chasing us. However, the person driving the Mazda he cut off gave us the finger.

  “I lost them,” Malware said, but his posture didn’t relax.

  I sat forward. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Look.” I smoothed the sheer fabric of the paper-thin harem pants over my thighs. “I’m sorry I forced you to be a master—I don’t know how I did it, or how I knew your name. I can’t ever thank you enough for freeing me from the bottle. But… why is it stalking me?”

  “Your bottle is behaving like it does when a djinni first summons it. I know you were tricked into it.” Malware sighed. “What’s your name?”

  “Lucy.” I tilted my head to the side. “How d'you know I was tricked?”

  “The burns on your wrists, and your bottle doesn’t dematerialize. So, who was it?”

  I rubbed my wrists. The burns didn’t hurt, but the scarring was horrifying, like melted wax covered my skin. I checked my palm for the cut I’d had treated at the urgent care. The stitches had dissolved some time ago, and there wasn’t a scar. At least there’s that, right?

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled.

  He slowed down so much that people honked at him. He frowned at the dashboard and swore, merging the car onto the shoulder. “Un-fucking-believable. We’ve run out of gas.”

  Chapter 8

  I climbed out of my car, cursing under my breath, and was nearly sideswiped by some asshole on the highway. “You’re supposed to switch lanes!”

  I sidled around to the back of my car. Bullet holes. The muscles in the back of my neck pinched. I crouched and ran my fingers over the holes, sniffing. Gas fumes. I checked beneath the car, and sure enough, the tank slowly dripped fluid.

  Lucy got out and approached me, worry wrinkling her forehead. “Did they shoot the gas tank?”

  I nodded.

  She swallowed. “We’re lucky we didn’t explode.”

  “Yeah, that’s about all the good luck I’ve had for the day.” I straightened and raked my fingers through my hair. My earpiece was gone, I’d left my cellphone behind in Gamblers’ Road, and there was no way I could call for help. I glanced at Lucy’s costume. No way I’d want to be seen with her. “This must be what I get for being a master, no matter for how short. Smoke and mirrors. It was only three minutes.”

  She frowned and bit her lower lip.

  I climbed into the passenger seat and retrieved my lightlighter identification from the glove compartment. At least I hadn’t brought that with me, or I’d be screwed. I reached through the seats and grabbed my laptop and her bottle.

  “C’mon. We gotta walk to the next exit and find a payphone. If there are any left.” I shoved her bottle into her hands.

  “I don’t want this.” Disgust dripped from her voice, and she held the bottle out from her.

  “Look, it’s gonna keep popping up when you get a certain distance from it. Take it now so it doesn’t screw us over like it did in Horsemen’s Park.” I walked down the shoulder, Lucy trailing behind me. “Why the outfit, huh?”

  “It bothers you that much?”

  “It’d bother any djinni.”

  She sighed and caught up to me on the shoulder, blocking my view of traffic. “My fiancé—ex-fiancé—picked it out for our couples’ costume for Halloween a couple of days ago… Well, I guess it was a lot longer. It’s May, isn’t it?”

  “Yup. The tenth.” The allure of djinni power always tore people apart. I glanced at the melted skin on her wrists. A loved one had done this to her, and I continued throwing the stain of ownership in her face. I felt like an asshole. I grasped her elbow and guided her to my other side so I blocked the traffic. “He’s the guy who bottled you, huh?”

  She nodded.

  “I can’t say which is worse, being forced to be a master or being bottled by someone you trust. At least I could do something about the ownership.” I glanced at her. “Otherwise, you would’ve had to wait for someone who was a genuinely nice person.”

  “You wished for me to have freewill.” She cupped her elbow with one hand and rubbed her chin with the other. “So, giving up mastery and wishing for freewill are two completely different things?”

  “Correct. Giving up mastery over a bottle doesn’t require wishes while freewill takes all three wishes to break the djinni cuffs.”

  “Reese gave up mastery over my bottle to wipe his debts clean. I thought it meant I was free, but I was still trapped,” she said in a tiny voice. “He didn’t mind being a master.”

  “He must be human.”

  “Was it really so bad?” she whispered. “Being a master?”

 
“Yes.” I wouldn’t sugarcoat anything for her. How did my smoke get twisted up in this shit? Once my cover was blown, my only saving grace with Ganger was bringing in Penny Avalon under suspicion of grand larceny and fae trickery. What could I do now to save my position in the CADD? There must have been a reason Lucy’s parents had kept her existence a secret from the bureau, and on top of the rest of this disaster, I had to deal with her, plus her status as an undocumented djinni. I sighed. “I was so close to infiltrating that djinni trafficking ring. I could’ve saved so many people.”

  “You saved me.”

  A sour taste filled my mouth. She was right. I was glad I’d saved one djinni, but I’d been working on that case for seven months. “My cover’s blown. The Curator is gonna lie low now, maybe even hop into the Faelands where I can’t do anything about it. How did you even think it’d be a good idea to name someone as your master?” I raked both hands through my hair. “And I made a wish. I’ve shamed my family. My word means nothing now.”

  “Oh, relax,” she snapped, her pale blue eyes red-rimmed and angry. “It’s not like I bound us together or something.”

  “At least there’s that.”

  Her teeth chattered, a flowery scent wafted from her, and a whisper of silk wrapped around my insides. Magic suffused me as a manacle clamped on my spine. I halted. My dry mouth moved, but I couldn’t form words. She turned around a few steps ahead of me.

  “What did you just do?” But I could see it, and a wave of heat swept up the back of my neck. Ethereal blue, green, and tan threads shimmered in the sunlight as djinni silk enfolded her waist and stretched to mine, connecting us. “Djinni silk! Are you—How the—You made me believe you knew nothing about magic!”

  Her face pinched. “I don’t.”

  “This is some heavy magic you’re slinging around. Do you see this?” I tugged on the djinni silk. Of course it didn’t unravel. I bared my teeth, muscles tensing. “Undo it. Now.”

  “I don’t know how I did it.” She gaped at the length of silk between us, her eyes widening. “Not that I’d want to make a connection with you.”

  “At least we’re both suffering.” I stormed past her and took an off-ramp from the highway. The silk unspooled from my core, like I was leaving something important behind. I glanced over my shoulder and sighed. She was a quarter-mile behind me. At least we weren’t attached at the hip. “Come on, Avalon. We have to figure out how to undo your mess.”

  She caught up to me, and again I made sure I blocked the traffic as we took the sidewalk heading toward a gas station. With how my luck was going today, she’d become roadkill, and I’d be convicted for manslaughter, or worse. I rolled my shoulders, trying to shake out the tension to no avail.

  “Stupid me, casting weird ass magic on someone like him,” she muttered heatedly. “I sure know how to pick ‘em. Who the hell names their kid Malware, anyway?”

  I glared at her. “It’s because my mother wanted me to do good with my life.”

  She blinked at me. “What’re you talking about?”

  “That’s why she named me Malware. She wanted me to be able to sneak into criminal groups and dismantle them.”

  “So are you a spy for the CIA or something?”

  “No, I’m a lightlighter for the bureau. My jurisdiction is the Lantern. The place where you were auctioned off like a painting. Remember?” I snapped. “I don’t know why I’m explaining this to you.”

  “Ouch.”

  I didn’t look at her; I couldn’t. I was being unreasonable, but bottle ownership had branded me. I rubbed my sternum, wondering how badly my burn was—if it was as bad as hers. Damnit! I’d made a vow. Master of none; Knight to all. I was tarnished goods, and all those years as a lightlighter swirled down the drain.

  “Shame a nice ass is wasted on him. Focus, Lucy.” She cleared her throat. “So, Malware. Guess that’s clever, then.”

  “Not until recently.” It was a strange name even for a djinni when I’d started at the bureau, and it only began making sense when the Internet exploded in the ‘90s. “So, what’s your vocation?”

  “Er… Pizzaiola?”

  “Unusual. I’ve never heard of that type of djinni, but I guess it takes all kinds.”

  She snorted. “Thanks. So yours is spying?”

  “No, I blend in.”

  “Not with those lips,” she said wryly. “That explains the Honda then.”

  She had a weird way of moving her mouth sometimes when she spoke. I wasn’t sure how she got the words out. I glared at her. “Keep your opinions to yourself, all right?” Now I understood why women had such a problem with the constant comments about their bodies.

  She jerked, her forehead wrinkling.

  We reached the gas station doors and I lifted a hand to stop her. “Just act human, okay? I’m gonna see if they have a payphone. Don’t wander away.”

  She nodded. “If I had my cell phone, I could call an Uber and get away from this asshole.”

  I tensed, biting back a retort. I wasn’t the asshole here. Ignoring her was my best option. I didn’t enjoy causing scenes in public places, even if she was picking a fight with me. I checked to make sure there was a payphone, spotted the sign by the restrooms, and approached the counter.

  “Oh!” She sounded startled and delighted at the same time.

  When I checked on her, she had a phone in her hands. She hadn’t had that before, so the only explanation was that it came from her bottle. Either she didn’t know how that worked or she was reckless. I wasn’t sure which. Judging how my luck was running today, I’d wager on both.

  “Do you have a signal?” I asked.

  “Er…” She blushed. “Dead battery.”

  Figures. I turned back to the counter. “Can I get change for the payphone?”

  The clerk changed me out for quarters, and we headed toward the payphone. I picked up the receiver, thumbed in some quarters, then hit the latch and collected the change. I didn’t know who to call. My closest human relatives lived in Iowa, but I didn’t want to bring trouble home to Pops, and I had no idea how I’d explain djinni silk binding me to an undocumented djinni to Ganger.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked softly. “Did I mess up again?”

  In a way, she had, but I kept that to myself. She looked a little too fragile, and the emotions sliding across our djinni silk bond were making me shaky. Smoke and mirrors, she was terrified and despondent.

  I replaced the receiver to its cradle. “I don’t know who to call.”

  “Look, my car’s at my apartment, and I keep a spare set of keys inside.” Lucy tucked her phone into a pocket. “I’ll have to see Reese.” She clenched her fists. “If I get my car, we can go to my parents’ house.” Blinking rapidly, she swiped her hair back. “I just want my mom right now.” Her teeth worried her lower lip. “But I don’t have any cash.”

  I was half-mesmerized by how she spoke. Sometimes she mumbled, other times she spoke so clearly it was practically broadcast in my head. Mostly, I needed her to calm down so I could think clearly. “I have a credit card, so I can swing the fare.”

  I called a cab, and we waited outside.

  “Mom will fix everything once I get home.” She sat on the curb.

  “I hope so.”

  “Hmm?”

  I shook my head at her. If I had to repeat myself every time I said something, then I wouldn’t bother speaking. I settled beside her, hunched over my knees, and dropped my chin to my chest. I couldn’t see a positive outcome. If Penny Avalon really was Lucy’s mother, then we had a major problem. She was hiding from people like me.

  The cab pulled up, and Lucy was eerily quiet on the ride, but anxiety rolled off her as thick as forest smoke. She was livid, nervous, frightened, and dejected. No wonder she made little sense half the time. I began to feel out of sorts from the emotions slamming into me via the bond.

  Djinni silk was incredibly intimate. Usually, only married couples created them to bind their souls together to share a bo
ttle, and I didn’t know the first thing about her. But djinni silk had its limitations, like never taking separate vacations. I’d also heard djinni silk could allow people to speak telepathically, read each other’s emotions, and it increased sensations between one another. Though each bond was different, and I assumed I only knew a fraction about them. I rubbed my mouth. The length of our djinni silk worried me. Some were only a couple hundred feet long, and we had at least a quarter-mile. But since she wasn’t responding to my thoughts, I doubted ours was strong. It had to be easily torn. Fae could tear djinni silk, and some djinni curse merchants could, too.

  Her apartment wasn’t far. I paid the fare—at least my card hadn’t been declined—and we hopped out. The neighborhood wasn’t great, but I’d seen worse. I followed her up the stairs. She tried the door first, but it was locked. She knocked.

  A middle-aged black woman answered the door and smiled. “Can I help you?”

  “Oh, I thought this was Reese Lane’s place.” Lucy glanced at the apartment number, and her shoulders sagged. “At least it used to be.”

  “Nope. I’ve lived here for about six weeks now,” the woman replied.

  Lucy nodded. “Sorry for bothering you.”

  I hurried back down the stairs and into the parking lot. With any luck, the taxi was still there. I hit the parking lot in time to watch it pull into traffic. I should’ve known that would be the case.

  “Sorry. I guess after his accident, he couldn’t afford to live here by himself anymore.” Lucy’s eyes glistened. I could feel how close she was to losing it, but she wasn’t giving in to hysterics. “I mean, he couldn’t even pay off his debts. What made me think he could still live in this shithole apartment without me?”

  “I wondered if he’d still be here,” I said. “Logically, it makes sense he’d have to bail. He was probably evicted.”

  “You have no idea.” She laughed harshly, then scanned the parking lot. “I don’t see my car.”

  “Is there a gas station close by? I need to call another cab.”